Comments

Ron Dixon has presented results on the correlation between the altitude achieved by a 3- inch (76-mm) shell and the length of the mortar from which it was fired. Provided that the mortar length was at least 18 inches (457 mm), there was no further gain in shell altitude with increasing mortar length. My own anecdotal observations are entirely in accord with Ron Dixon’s measurements, provided that a commercial Black Powder lift is used. However there may be more to the old pyrotechnists’ wives’ tale of increasing shell altitude with increasing mortar length than these measurements suggest.

In the late 1960s there was only Weingart’s Pyrotechnics, and it was a suggestion of a rewrite to the Publisher that led to my own first edition in 1972. As we have grown in experience there have been two further editions. It has been interesting to see how many little bits of new information first published in those times are now taken as commonplace.